January 24, 2010

Stop the preachers of hate

Once again, the alarm bell is ringing - yet still much of Britain sleeps. The news that the threat level has been raised to "severe" should not surprise us. And of course, it shows that while much of Britain sleeps, there are excellent people in our security services working night and day to protect us. They, at least, are awake to the threat. But even if policy makers are awake to the immediate threat of terrorism, large parts of society - including government, media and academia - have still not got to grips with the ideological underpinnings of these terrorist threats.

It seems mind-bogglingly naive, not to mention stupid, to allow Yahya Ibrahim to speak at Birmingham University in March and the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff next month. He reportedly advocates conflict with the West, promotes Wahhabism and Salafi ideology, and has received funding to do so from the Government's anti-extremism Prevent strategy.

And Mr Ibrahim is not alone. According to today's Sunday Telegraph, radical Islamist and Hamas supporter Azzam Tamimi spoke at Birmingham University last week. He has been described by Denis MacShane MP, a former Labour minister, as "a notorious Jew-hater and supporter of terrorist attacks on Jewish women and children in Israel", and someone guilty of "glorifying Jihad and the killing of those opposed to his fanatical Islamist worldview."

Mr. Al-Sudais is another one. An imam from the Grand Mosque in Mecca, he has described Jews as "the scum of the human race". Several other Islamists, banned from other countries, have visited Britain in the past few years.

Iqbal Wahhab notes that many Muslims in Britain have not fully integrated into society, and that is obvious if they are inviting preachers like Mr. Ibrahim and Mr. Tamimi. The Sunday Telegraph reports that Britain is believed to have the largest number of Islamic extremists of any Western nation. "There is a clear and present danger," he warns. "People are living parallel lives. The levels of communication and understanding, and the respect of each other's cultures, doesn't happen because we don't come one another." Ghetto-isation, one of the major symptoms of the sloppy and ill-thought out ultra-politically correct multi-culturalism of recent decades, has led to radicalisation. Instead of an integrated diversity, as in the US, where we can celebrate different cultures but unite around some shared values, we have parallel worlds existing side by side. The creeping introduction of Sharia throughout parts of Britain exacerbates this even further.

There are also double-standards involved. I am not a fan of Geert Wilders, I dislike his unnecessarily provocative tone, and I certainly disagree with his proposal to ban the Qu'ran. However, why did we ban him from entering the UK last year, but we allow people like Mr. Ibrahim and Mr. Tamimi in? Mr. Wilders has views with which we may disagree, but he does not preach violence and is, even if in a distasteful tone, addressing some very real challenges which need to be addressed. We should have let Mr. Wilders, who poses no threat to anyone, visit London and engage in debate with those who disagree. He was open to debate. The opposite is true of the likes of Mr. Ibrahim, and yet they come in, peddling their sermons of hatred, unchallenged.

It is not as if today's Sunday Telegraph is the first time we have heard all this. Melanie Phillips' book Londonistan and Michael Gove's Celsius 7/7 were published four years ago. And those are just two books among many I could name. It's time we learned, woke up, and acted to stop Britain being used as a base for hatred and extremism.

Comments

Stop the preachers of hate

Once again, the alarm bell is ringing - yet still much of Britain sleeps. The news that the threat level has been raised to "severe" should not surprise us. And of course, it shows that while much of Britain sleeps, there are excellent people in our security services working night and day to protect us. They, at least, are awake to the threat. But even if policy makers are awake to the immediate threat of terrorism, large parts of society - including government, media and academia - have still not got to grips with the ideological underpinnings of these terrorist threats.

It seems mind-bogglingly naive, not to mention stupid, to allow Yahya Ibrahim to speak at Birmingham University in March and the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff next month. He reportedly advocates conflict with the West, promotes Wahhabism and Salafi ideology, and has received funding to do so from the Government's anti-extremism Prevent strategy.